Ntfs

Can someone one tell me what NTFS is and how it's different from FAT 32
Thank you
Paul

 

Short not to technical descritpion.

More robust, fault tolerent allows smaller clusters thereby giving more usable space on the disk. Larger partitions!

But with NT Win2k and XP gives the ability to set very good security and restrictions. Invaluable in bussiness where security and file control is a nessesity.

As a home user you will not notice the difference. Unless that is XP or Win2k fails and you have to boot to dos to save some data emails etc.

Then you will notice that you can not access the drive! Smile! Only for XP Win2k NT.

Win95/98 ME can not see a NTFS drive.

Mike

 

Thanks Mike,
I guess that's why agood backup is necessary.
Paul

 

NTFS backup

I recently installed a CD-burner with Nero software. My expectation was to burnin a C-drive backup. The software is the latest version, but does not yet completely support the NTFS 3.1 file system on XP. Nero's tech support is on vacation until Jan. 6th, and their product states it supports XP, so I await a solution!

Nero is sector and not file oriented, as such it cannot distinquish data files from system files and any backup of the C-drive requires an entire backup of both partitions sector by sector. The other partition is 32 FAT. Apparently this would be the explanation for the problem. I assume 32 FAT holds the O/S and is the the primary partition.

Further reading states a system reinstallation of a backup is problematic because part of the system files would be in RAM during a backup session and lost. If this is true how do other system backups work around that problem?

 

Ken

Not a good way to do it even if it works.

The drive is probably bigger than a cd's 650m any way, spliting an image gives a slight possibiliy of problems rejoining. If they don't join all is gone. Try to get it to one disk if possible.

If you have read some of my other posts you will see that I advise installing only the OS and OS items on the boot drive and Apps and Data on other partitions.

Hence you can see the advantage of the size. Backup or image OS and Data seperately. Blow the OS and do a restore and everything still works on the data drives as usual. But the best time to do this is a fresh install.

Best option. Dive image or Ghost. These use compression to reduce the size of the image. Then just copy the image to the CD.

Tip! Before imaging. Do cleanups, less to backup! Move the swap/page file to another partition it can be large an is not needed in the image. Also look for any dump files and delete. And if you are using system restore move them to another partition for the image and back when complete. These are large files that should not be in an image.

If for some reason you still want to use Nero and can get it to work the above still applies and will greatly reduce the size of the backup.

Mike

 

Mike,

I will research past posts for another perspective and a better understanding of the situation. The two file systems with different partitions on the same disk presents a unique circumstance for each file system that I haven't given much thought. What you say makes sense. Thanks.

 

Ken

If you use an Image, the file system on any partition does not matter and the cd will not be NTFS anyway.

Mike

 

Ken

Just reread your question!

No question that Nero supports XP (I have it on XP) that does not mean it will format and create a NTFS file system on a CD. This will probably never happen, at least not soon. Maybe someone else has heard of it but I haven't.

But it will access NTFS partitions.

Your file inuse question is simple. Both Drive Image and Ghost boot to DOS and can image either fat or ntfs and put it on a CD and even split it across cdrw or other removable media.

Mike